When Miller wrote of this episode for the William Walters commission, he minced no words about the perils of the hunt, especially when a foolhardy hunter like Pierre was involved. “The incident from which this sketch was made,” Miller wrote, “seems to have had a fatality about it.” “The hero ‘Pierre,’ although escaping this, eventually lost his life in a similar encounter.” Yet, even though Pierre survived this encounter, sacrificing a good horse in the pursuit of a little “fun,” as Pierre referred to it, could have put him in jeopardy, or at least on foot. No wonder his “elder and more experienced brother” made every effort to “induce him to desist” (Ross, 58). Such filial advice was evidently not heeded.
